


These Moments

by LittleMissLiesmith



Series: The Better The Lives We Lead [5]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Realities, Dating, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M, dating fluff, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissLiesmith/pseuds/LittleMissLiesmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In everyone's life, usually at a younger age, there's a time when everything is bright and beautiful and all love is forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Moments

_Before_

“My sister—“

“Lauren—“

They both stopped, Diego looking awkwardly down (at least from what Kevin could see of his eyes, through the mask) and Kevin blushing. “You first.”

“No, you.”

“Fine. My sister is, erm…I apologize for my sister.”

“I apologize for Lauren. I promise I haven’t been stalking you or anything. Just…watching you. Kind of. Not in a creepy way, though.”

Diego’s eyes were alight and Kevin thought he might be smiling. “And I promise I do indeed talk about things other than you. You simply happen to…come up a lot.”

“…So.”

“So.”

More awkward standing until Diego extended an arm. “About that dance…”

“Oh! Of course.”

Diego was a good dancer. Diego was a very good dancer. He didn’t once step on Kevin’s feet (good thing, with those stilettos). The same could not be said for Kevin himself, however; he was tripping, stepping on Diego’s feet, and ended up crashing into the punch bowl on a twirl.

Diego laughed as he fell with him, dragged along until the two were in the remnants of the table, Kevin on his back with punch on his jacket, Diego holding himself up by the arms above Kevin, their fingers still entwined. “That was—“

“A disaster. I’m awful, aren’t I?”

“Actually, I was going to say that was endearing.” He looked at Kevin through the eye holes of his mask, clearly smiling once again. “I…find you endearing.”

It occurred to Kevin that maybe, possibly, the entirely put-together Diego Rodriguez might not have had a girlfriend or boyfriend before.

“I find you to be fascinating,” he said, up at his—his date? He had a date.

Diego looked down, at that, and then seemed to notice which way he looking and quickly returned his gaze to Kevin’s face. “Have you ever…seen me properly? Without the mask?”

“Not straight on, no.”

Diego balanced on one hand, lifted the other up, and removed the mask. Within a moment he was looking down at Kevin with frighteningly black eyes—no, Kevin noted, his eyes were actually a nice shade of hazel, but the pupil and iris were much, much larger than normal, nearly pushing the white out of the way, and the pupil itself took up the majority of the space and left little room for the hazel ring.

It had been shadowed by the mask, and Kevin thought in that moment that no one was more attractive than Diego Rodriguez.

“Ooh,” he said, reaching up his free hand as Diego put his down, the mask still clenched tightly in his fist. Kevin brushed a hand to his cheek and up over his eyelid. “Pretty.”

Somehow, and Kevin was never sure quite how, Kevin ended up kissing Diego within the next moment, until they were pulled off the table wreckage by Luciano and Sergio, neither of whom was very pleased with them.

“You two,” Sergio hissed, “need to behave properly. Understand?”

“Got it,” Diego said, giving a thumbs up.

“Demerit for insubordination, Rodriguez,” Luciano said with a bored tone, inspecting the remains of the table. “Oh, and I will be phoning your parents to pay for our table.”

“It’s just a table and they’re your aunt and uncle—“

“Rodriguez, you are in school and this is not home! I am not your cousin, I am the music teacher!” Luciano was doing the half-laugh thing he did when he was angry or annoyed. “You are going to listen to me!”

Diego stood there with a deer-in-headlights look before muttering “Yes, sir.”

Kevin sniggered.

“Shaddap, _Kev_.”

“Sorry. Don’t call me Kev.”

“Why not?”

“Can I call you Dee?”

“…we can stick to Kevin.”

 

_After_

Lauren and Daniel heard the crash but didn’t go inside. They were sitting on the steps outside the hall, Lauren looking up to the stars and Daniel leaning back with his hands braced against the stoop.

“It’s so pretty,” she said quietly. “I live in a city, so there’s smog everywhere. I don’t often get to see the stars like this.”

“My house is out in the country,” Daniel said, then a little awkwardly “I could, erm…invite you. If you want.”

Lauren looked over at him. “There’s no need for that. Divina just went and set us up because she had already taken care of Diego and Kevin. You don’t actually have to…”

“No, no,” Daniel said hastily. “I—I like spending time with you. You’re good company. And, erm. I’ve seen you looking at me? In the halls?” He bit his lip. “I, on occasion, look back. You don’t notice.”

Lauren blinked at him. “…er…”

“Sorry. That was creepy, wasn’t it?”

“No, not at all.” She moved a little closer, leaning on his shoulder. He hesitantly put an arm around her; when she snuggled into his shoulder, he smiled and relaxed.

“Good. That’s…good, I suppose.” He looked back up at the stars. “If you wanted, instead of to come to my house, to perhaps go for coffee…”

“Daniel Vega, are you asking me out on a date?” she asked teasingly.

“Perhaps. Lauren Mallard, are you accepting my offer of a date?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “If it’s good coffee.”

“The best. Angels Coffeehouse in town. Night Vale’s got some very good places to go for it.”

“I’ve never been into town. I don’t have a bike.”

“We’ll share mine.”

“Big bike.”

“We’ll have to press close.”

“I see no issue with this.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. “That was…” Lauren said.

“I don’t know what that was,” Daniel said, chuckling.

“However, I do think I have a date, so there’s that.”

“And I think the same thing. I’ll meet you outside the dorms at, oh, ten tomorrow morning?”

“That sounds lovely. Do we have to leave now?”

Daniel considered. “Hm…not unless you want to.”

She shivered. “I’m a little cold.”

Daniel pulled off his leather jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It was surprisingly soft and smelled like woodsmoke. “Oh. Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said. “I’m a robot.”

“….no, you’re not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because robots don’t feel like people.”

“Biomachines do.”

“You’re not a biomachine.”

“How do you know that?”

Their voices drifted over the campus as Halloween night wore on, and the next day Lauren was waiting outside the dorms at nine fifty-five in jeans and a DBPA black sweater, Daniel’s jacket draped over her arm and his mask hanging off her wrist.

 

_Near_

The campus in winter was covered in thick white snow straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Lauren and Daniel had left Divina, Diego, and Kevin ice-skating on the pond, draped their own skates by the strings over their arms, pulled on their boots, and gone for a walk.

Lauren stepped under an ice-coated tree, spreading out her arms and looking up at the little glittering shards. “It’s so pretty,” she said in wonder.

Daniel snorted and wrapped an arm around her waist, clasping his free hand with one of hers and rubbing along the gloved palm. “It’s dangerous, did you know that? Ice coats the road like it does the trees and people go spinning out of control. As early as late October some years, especially this far north.”

Lauren shot him a cross look. “I was saying it was pretty, I don’t need a lecture on dead people,” she said crossly.

“Well, you never know when someone you love might get in an accident—“

“ _Daniel!_ ”

Daniel laughed. “Fine, fine. I won’t talk about our impending doom for the rest of the day, how about?”

“That’s all I can expect of you.” She looked up at the tree. “Mom used to tell me about Jack Frost. The boy who came to the windows and breathed patterns in ice on them. We’d get a lot of frosts, but snow never stayed this nice for long. It’d end up black and piled by the side of the road.”

Daniel wrinkled his nose. “I see snow like that when we visit the city in the winter. Not very pleasant. You should visit my family this year.”

Lauren laughed. “Really, Daniel. It’s November.”

“Visit for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. We can go sledding and skating and—“ He paused and haltingly sang “ _Do you wanna build a snowmaaaan—_ “

Lauren laughed and pushed him lightly. “Not Thanksgiving, I promised Kev I’d visit Cecil with him. Maybe Christmas, though. I’ll call my parents and ask.”

“Do that.” He kissed the top of her head and guided her along past the tree into a little path surrounded by them, the limbs bowed over by ice and creating a tunnel for the two to pass through.

Lauren thought that maybe this was what _perfect_ felt like.

 

_Far_

Diego was, in fact, perfectly willing to buy everyone tickets to Prague.

“I thought you were kidding!” Lauren yelled when Kevin told her.

He laughed. “Nope! We’re all going! You, me, Diego, Divina, Daniel, some of the Vega cousins. Diego suggested it to his mother, she thought it was a great idea and bought us all tickets, we’re going on a three day trip to Prague!”\

Which was why they were boarding a commercial plane with only carry-on bags. Antonio and Jezebel had chosen seats in the back, Divina was asleep in the third row (which caused Diego to mutter “already?”), and Lauren, Daniel, Diego, Kevin, and Sammy were taking up the rest of the row.

Kevin was staring out the window, a hand pushed against the glass and eyes wide in wonder. “I’ve never been on a plane before,” he said. “I’ve barely been out of Night Vale.”

Diego, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand. “Worried?”

“A little.”

On the other side of the aisle, Daniel and Lauren were leaning on each other, Sammy on Daniel’s other side by the window, just as awed as Kevin—although he had been on a plane before and that was just Sammy.

“I’m kind of…not fond of planes,” Lauren muttered.

Kevin leaned across the aisle. “Aw, Lauren, don’t worry! Do you know how many planes had mechanical failure in the last year?”

“Um, three?”

“No, only a hundred and eighty! We’ll be fine!”

Lauren was looking very pale. “Right. Thanks, Kev.”

Divina chose that moment to wake up, realize everyone else was elsewhere, and move back to sit next to Diego. “Hey, guys,” she muttered before promptly shutting her eyes and falling back asleep, half on her twin’s shoulder.

“Come on,” Diego muttered before wrapping an arm around Kevin’s shoulders. “This’ll be fun, guys. We’ll have fun.”

“I’m sure we will,” Kevin said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

He leaned on the window, Diego leaned on him, and Divina leaned on Diego. On the other side Daniel had Lauren half in his lap and Sammy was bouncing excitedly and chanting “To Prague, to Prague, we’re going to Prague.”

“Shut up, Sammy,” Daniel moaned.

“No way! To Prague, to Prague, we’re going to Prague—“

And so they were.

 

_Here_

“This place is so pretty,” Kevin marveled as he stepped into Tourniquet. “The chandelier—“

“Hey, Kevin.” Diego stepped forward from where he was leaning on the wall. “Our table is this way.”

The hostess led them to a small, secluded corner by a wall mural of maybe Italy or maybe just Some Unnamed European Nation. Kevin wasn’t entirely sure. She brought them champagne, too.

“No, we’re—“

Diego clapped a hand over his mouth and smiled winningly. “Got anything a year earlier?”

When she returned with the right champagne, the two were engaged in conversation, Kevin telling a story about his and Lauren’s offer to be the radio hosts for the next year and her reaction and Diego laughing so hard he was almost falling off of his seat. When she came around with their entrees, Diego was telling Kevin about his life growing up with the Vegas; at dessert they were commiserating over annoying siblings; when Diego paid for the check and the two walked out they were silent. Not an awkward kind of silence, just companionable silence, happy to be in each other’s presence.

 

_Forever_

_There’s an age everyone reaches at one point. The age, be it in high school or college or young adulthood, when it is always true love and it is always forever._

_Forever can last any amount of time. A day, a year, a summer, an eternity, a lifetime, to Hell and back, from Heaven above to earth below. Forever can be any place, any time, but everyone has the time in their life when it is always forever._

_In another life to lead, they may not meet until after the years of forever are over. Until they are adult enough to know that forever cannot exist. In another life to lead, it can end in heartbreak and pain, in sadness and quiet loss and the things you can’t tell anyone for whatever reason. In another life to lead, they are still together, still with each other, but they are tragedies, and it is not this life._

_In this life, they’re students on a sunny day, walking in the woods, twirling at a masquerade and passing notes in class, visiting each other and visiting those far from home, talking about teachers and students, gossiping and trading secrets and petty barbs._

_This life is better._

_And they can keep it forever, however long that lasts._

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by smilodonmeow.
> 
> Anyone can send me a prompt, I'll totally do it.
> 
> My tumblr is hans-the-liesmith where I rant about my personal life and post art, prompt challenges, random thoughts and headcanons, and readings for this fic.


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